History Unplugged Podcast

In 2017, over 47,000 Americans died as the result of opioid overdoses, more than died annually in this country during the peak of the AIDs epidemic, and more than die every year from breast cancer. But despite the unprecedented efforts of regulators, activists, politicians, and doctors to address the overdose epidemic, it has only become more deadly, the legion of quick fixes often falling into th...

Dwight Eisenhower inaugurated the US. Interstate System, which now boasts more than 50,000 miles of roads. The idea came to a young Eisenhower in 1919 when he spent 62 days with a military convoy snaking across America on its primitive road system. But the idea for a trans-continental road network go back much further than Eisenhower. George Washington talked of the need for a vast system of roads...

On August 9, 1974, Richard Nixon became the first and only U.S. president to resign from office—to avoid almost certain impeachment. Utterly disgraced, he was forced to flee the White House with a small cadre of advisors and family. Richard Nixon was a completely defeated man. Yet only a decade later, Nixon was a trusted advisor to presidents, dispensing wisdom on campaign strategy and foreign pol...

From Vikings and African queens to cross-dressing military doctors and WWII Russian fighter pilots, battle was not a metaphor for women across history. But for the most part, women warriors have been pushed into the historical shadows, hidden in the footnotes, or half-erased. Yet women have always gone to war—or fought back when war came to them.  They fought to avenge their families, defend their...

Dracula Untold has absolutely no right being as historically accurate as it is. Made in 2014, this was Universal Studio's first attempt to use the intellectual property of their 1930s monster movies and turn it into a Marvel-esque cinematic universe. As a result, it is full of X-men type superpowers, CGI, and what Scott calls "supernatural shenanigans." Despite all this, the film accurately descri...

In the final two episodes of this mini-series, Steve and Scott talk about movies that actually do a good job of conveying history, or at least as much as possible when handled by Hollywood producers enslaved to suggestions from marketing research reports. The first film is the Alamo (2004).The purported goal of the filmmakers was to have this movie be as historically accurate as possible, or at le...

Subscribe today for access to all premium episodes! https://patreon.com/unplugged See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Demi Moore did not win any Academy Awards for her portrayal of 17th-century Puritan Hester Prynne. But she did succeed in transforming Nathaniel Hawthorne's famous moral drama into a Cinemax movie that also features Indians, deadly fights, burning buildings, flaming arrows, and a rousing speech in which Dimmsdale calls for sexual freedom. Dear listeners, this is not a good film. See omnystudio.com...

In our second John Wayne film, we watch the Duke put on a fake fu manchu mustache and yellow face makeup to play the role he was born NOT to play: Genghis Khan. Scott and Steve discuss the infamous film that, in addition to featuring the worst casting choice in Hollywood history, has hundreds of anachronisms and, worst of all, may have killed dozens of the cast and crew from radiation poisoning du...

John Wayne was 62 years old when he tried to portray a fit Vietnam War Green Beret colonel, but the obvious age gap isn't the only head scratcher in this film. Released in 1968, the film was Lyndon B. Johnson-approved attempt to shift American opinion on the Vietnam War. Listen to this episode to see if it worked. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Based on Dan Brown's mega best-selling instructional manual on how to write terrible English, Scott and Steve discuss "The Da Vinci Code," the 2006 Ron Howard film that dares to ask the question: Has the secret life of Jesus been hidden by the Catholic Church and heroically uncovered by half-baked conspiracy theorists who have an extremely poor understandings of the gnostic gospels? The answer wil...

In the second episode of this series, Stephen tells us everything he doesn't like about the 2009 film Agora, which is a lot. The movie stars Rachel Weisz (maybe the only good thing about the film) as Hypatia, a real-life 4th/5th-century philosopher in Alexandria killed by political infighting among politicians and clergy. Her actual story is very interesting and tells us much about late Roman civi...

This episode is the first in a mini-series that Scott is doing with fellow history podcaster Stephen Guerra (History of the Papacy, Beyond the Big Screen) about some of the most historically inaccurate movies that have ever appear. We kick off this series with Ridley Scott's 2005 Crusader epic Kingdom of Heaven. Scott really did not like this movie. He considers it the worst example of screenwrite...

Next week an eight-part mini-series called Hollywood Hates History launches. Scott co-hosts with fellow history podcaster Steve Guerra to look at some of the most historically inaccurate movies ever made. Offenders include "The Scarlet Letter," the 1995 Demi Moore atrocity; "The Conqueror," a Genghis Khan biopic starring John Wayne; and "Kingdom of Heaven," in which Legolas the Elf successfully cr...

Americans and Europeans are confused by much about each other, especially their respective governmental systems. Europeans are baffled by American elections, the powers of the president, and most of all, the electoral college (how again is the popular vote winner not the president?). Americans are even more baffled by parliamentary politics, especially how the prime minister and even the entire ru...

George Washington is nearly as famous for his character as he is a general and statesman. In this episode we look at his famed attributes for leadership and doing such things as keeping together the fragile Continental Army in the hungriest, coldest days of the Revolutionary War. But perhaps the rarest quality of Washington was his ability not to seize power when he could. Many conquering generals...

This episode of History Unplugged is unlike any we've ever done. Scott interviews Joakim Brodén, lead singer of Swedish heavy metal band Sabaton, whose new album “The Great War” is a concept record focused on World War 1. The album features songs about the introduction of tank warfare and poisonous gas, the Battle of Bellau Woods, U.S. Marine Alvin York, and Canadian hero Francis Pegahmagabow, a F...

In 1587, 115 men, women, and children arrived at Roanoke Island on the coast ofNorth Carolina. Chartered by Queen Elizabeth I, their colony was to establish England's first foothold in the New World. But when the colony's leader, John White, returned to Roanoke from a resupply mission, his settlers were nowhere to be found. They left behind only a single clue—a "secret token" carved into a tree. N...

Albert Einstein’s rise to fame was not instantaneous and easy. Rather, Einstein’s celebrity was, in large part, not his own doing. His grand ideas (ideas that would change physics forever) were formulated during a time of worldwide crises. The Great War quickly escalated into an industrialized slaughter that bled Europe from 1914 to 1918. Einstein was a victim of that war, even though, as a pacifi...

Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1968 seemed like it should have been an open-and-shut case. Many people crowded in the small room at Los Angeles’s famed Ambassador Hotel that fateful night and saw Sirhan Sirhan pull the trigger. Sirhan was also convicted of the crime and still languishes in jail with a life sentence. However, conspiracy theorists have used inconsistencies in the eyewitness te...

In this episode we look at all U.S. presidents who served as fighter pilots or in any sort of military combat role. We also look at the first president to fly (it was in a rinky-dink Wright Bros. flyer), the development of Air Force One, and the theory that aviators make better leaders. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If a list were constructed of the most important Virginians in American history, George Mason would appear near the top. His influence on public policy, the Revolution, and the Constitution was far greater than his modern, meager reputation allows. His close friendships with Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Henry, and many others from his state allowed him to influence the direction of state and fe...

Subscribe today for access to all premium episodes! https://patreon.com/unplugged See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode we are looking at ancient Greek cryptography and the Roman frumentarii, a group of wheat sellers who turned into the empire's premier intelligence outfit in the second century. In the fourth century BC, Aeneas Tacticus wrote “How to Survive Under Siege.” He goes into considerable detail on cryptography and steganography—the art of concealing a message. Methods of steganography incl...

Spycraft is as old as civilization and just as essential to running a government as taxes, roads, armies, or schools. Sun Tzu devoted an entire chapter to spy craft in his 2,600-year-old treatise The Art of War and understood that critical intelligence was impossible to gather without espionage. This episode is the first in a two-part series on spy craft in the ancient world. We will explore the o...